Dissident Voice

April
10, 2003

Why of course the people don't want war!
Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the
best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally,
the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for
that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of
the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag
the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament,
or a communist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be
brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to
tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

-- Hermann Göring

How
prophetic the words of Nazi weasel Mr. Göring ring when considered against the
run up to US President Bush and his administration’s aggression on Iraq. The US
and UK conducted a hypocritical buildup of military force in the Persian Gulf
while Iraq was being disarmed. Consequently the US and UK sought international
approbation through the UN for violence. This was in abject oppugnancy to the
principles incorporated into the UN Charter to save future generations from the
evil of war.

The
US and its fidel underling, the UK, haphazardly constructed a diaphanously
guised scenario to overthrow the Iraqi regime militarily. Haphazardly because
it was built on an edifice of blatant hypocrisy and a farrago of lies. There
never was a hint of a plausible casus belli proffered by the Bush-Blair cabal. (1) Instead plagiarized student papers masqueraded as the
latest intelligence, intelligence contrary to the US-UK thesis was buried, and
a host of leads were discredited from suspect aluminum rods to fake
documentation of uranium purchases from Niger. It finally wound up that Mr.
Blair in exasperation turned to the paradoxical moral war argument. Mr. Blair
unwittingly discovered that his moral standing faltered ignominiously when
confronted with the dissenting voices of the Pope, British clerical leaders,
Nelson Mandela, and Nobel Laureates.

The
moral war argument had no historical leg to stand on. British and American
adventurism in the Middle East, especially vis-à-vis Iraq and Israel refuted
any moral authority of the US-UK belligerents and conversely exposed a history
of hypocrisy. (2) Even the latest US attempt to smooth
over the heinous incongruency of politically supporting, financing, and arming
Israel in their blood-spilling of Arabs to expropriate their land is eerily
reminiscent of the doomed-from-its-inception Oslo Accord. Uri Avnery
compellingly laid out how the so-called roadmap of the Quartet is a sham
lacking in specifics, a red herring to stall the ongoing upheaval in the
region. (3)

These
longtime exploiters of Iraq claim to be liberators. What kind of liberty are
the Iraqis supposed to be expecting when they know a Zionist sympathizer, Lt.
Gen. Jay Garner, is waiting in the wings to head Iraq in the reconstruction
phase? Then there is the scandalized Pentagon hawk Richard Pearle who rabbited
on about how a convicted criminal Ahmed Chalabi was Washington’s Iraqi face for
regime change. (4) How is all this supposed to play out on
the war-ravaged Iraqis who endured 12 years of killing sanctions and then
another onslaught of US-UK ordnance?

Well,
it seems that is something the world is not supposed to find out. War
correspondent Kate Adie relayed the bold Pentagon threat to media who stepped
outside the bounds of reporting. (5) First the US was
beating independent journalists. (6) Now they are bombing
them. Iraqi TV was bombed earlier on. But now the US guns are trained on
foreign media outlets. Al-Jazeera was taken out despite many US assurances they
wouldn’t be hit; Abu Dhabi TV was also bombed. American forces also turned
their guns on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad where most media types are
staying. The US deflected blame for the four media personnel killed. It
maintained that the media were “not safe” in a war zone. The US countered that
it was being fired on from the Palestine Hotel, which was denied by others
present. In most cases the blame is pinned on the Iraqis and usually on their
despot. Even the firing on the Russian diplomatic convoy by the US was blamed
on the Iraqis. It seems the victims are pointing the finger at the US while the
US points at President Hussein. A CBC piece that detailed how an errant US bomb
obliterated 11 Afghan civilians in the still festering Afghanistan evinced this
absurdity of holding Iraq responsible for almost every mishap. There is no Mr.
Hussein in Afghanistan to blame for US blunders. This was acknowledged as a
mistake and is, to no one’s surprise, under investigation. The US military
spokesman assured that "Coalition forces never intentionally target
civilian locations." (7)

The
media have exposed the folly of pre-invasion US-UK declamations. The lie has
been put to the notion that the Iraqi people would welcome the invading US and
UK fighters. Furthermore the mendacious claim of a sanitized high precision
violence has been refuted. The Arab networks in particular have been presenting
an explicit rendering of the horrors of violence. This has infuriated
Washington.

Washington
has enough on its hands in the US and has been unleashing excessive force
against dissent. Nasty pictures from Iraq might foment further unrest at home.
So when Yellow Times.org posted al-Jazeera video clips on its website it was
censored by its server. (8) Most mainstream media are in
bed with Washington. They have a large financial stake invested in the
Republican Party. (9)

CNN
knew the rules and anchor Aaron Brown openly confessed to censoring the news.
Mr. Brown said that CNN wouldn’t show images of casualties that cross the line
into pornography. Democracy Now!’s Jeremy Scahill's adroit rejoinder was:
"[Q]uite frankly there is no such thing as a 'tasteful civilian casualty,'
that term shouldn’t even be in the realm of journalism." (10)

The
so-called war is a bloody business. Civilian deaths are edging over 1000 and
the Red Cross is no longer able to keep track of casualties. They are simply
overwhelmed. Progressive media show the unsanitized ugly face of war.

The
US is sending a clear message. If you are not embedded media you can be
targeted. Blaming Iraq is a ready justification for all US-UK atrocities.

If
this is Operation Iraqi Freedom with a promise of democracy, it seems logical
to ask: What kind of a democracy can be built on the seeds of lies, omissions,
crimes, massive bombing, and killing? Not only that but something the
mainstream media don’t seem keen on iterating is that this aggression is in
fact illegal. To inflict aggression and decimate the beleaguered Iraqi civilian
population is a supreme crime. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg
didn’t mince words at the charge of aggression:

The
charges of the indictment that the defendants planned and waged aggressive war
are charges of the utmost gravity...To
initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it
is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that
it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

Legality
and morality are encompassed in one swoop. Meanwhile the sanctimonious and
risible “coalition of the willing” continues to aggress; the rest of the world
supinely observes as bystanders while the US and UK make a mockery of law and
morality.

That
is why the US can turn their guns on the independent media. This is not a war
it is an “accumulated evil of the whole.” A worse label is hard to come by.

Once
the world’s people really start to realize then the second superpower can begin
to exert itself as befits a superpower; as a force for morality.

(10) Democracy Now! “CNN's Aaron Brown:
On the Network's Coverage of the Anti-war Movement, Media's Sanitization of the
Iraq War and Why This is an Inappropriate Time for Reporters to ask Questions
About War,” 5 April 2003. Available on the Dissident Voice website: